PALSAR

The Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) on the ALOS satellite was developed under a joint project between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan Resources Observation System Organisation (JAROS).

The Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) on the ALOS satellite was developed under a joint project between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japan Resources Observation System Organisation (JAROS). The PALSAR acquisition strategy features routine observations at four pre-selected sensor modes i.e. Fine Beam Single Polarization, Fine Beam Dual Polarization, Fine Beam Polarimetric and ScanSAR. The mode selection represents a compromised solution where scientific requirements, user requests, programmatic aspects and satellite operational constraints have been taken into consideration. Acquisitions are planned in units of whole repeat cycles of 46 days, during which only one of the available default modes is selected.

The ALOS satellite has now completed its mission after 5 years of service. During this time, ALOS mapped the Earth's surface, created three dimensional terrain models and acquired a vast number of images which are available to order through Geoimage.